Word.ws English Dictionary

churchyard

Syllables: church·yardUK/ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ.jɑːd//ˈt͡ʃɝt͡ʃ.jɑɹd/

churchyard noun: a patch of land adjoining a church, often used as a graveyard.

churchyard: a patch of land adjoining a church, often used as a graveyard
Image: Julius, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

churchyard (plural churchyards)

  1. A patch of land adjoining a church, often used as a graveyard.
    • They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings, into the little village, through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall.1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC
    • Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a...1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 44
    Synonyms:
    kirkyard

churchyard meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

churchyard in Tamil

கோயில்முற்றம்

churchyard in Malayalam

graveyard, cemetery, necropolis
പള്ളിപ്പറമ്പ്, ശ്മശാനം, ശതാനകം, ആദഹനം, സെമിത്തേരി, ചിമിത്തേരി

Examples of churchyard in a sentence

  • The deceased was interred in his local churchyard.
  • Helena thought of the lonely girl in her flower-print dress at the churchyard.
  • Austin,' Lestrade said, 'but we are as yet unfamiliar with the toxology of the churchyard.

All 19 example sentences with churchyard

Synonyms of churchyard

Forms of churchyard

pluralchurchyards
alternative formchurch-yard

Plural of churchyard: churchyards

Origin of churchyard

Inherited from Middle English chircheyerd (also kirkeyerd > English kirkyard), equivalent to church + yard. Compare also Middle English kurk-garth, kyrkgarth, kirrkegærd, from Old Norse kirkjugarðr (“churchyard; graveyard”). Replaced Middle English chirchetoun from Old English ċirictūn (churchtown).

Words formed from churchyard

Phrases with churchyard

Questions about churchyard

What does churchyard mean?
Churchyard means a patch of land adjoining a church, often used as a graveyard.
What is churchyard in Tamil?
Churchyard in Tamil is கோயில்முற்றம். See Churchyard meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is churchyard?
Churchyard is a noun.
How do you pronounce churchyard?
Churchyard is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɝt͡ʃ.jɑɹd/ (US).
What is the plural of churchyard?
The plural of churchyard is churchyards.

Words near churchyard in the dictionary

  1. churchwoman
  2. churchwomanship
  3. churchwomen
  4. churchwork
  5. churchy
  6. churchyard
  7. churchyard cough
  8. churchyard coughs
  9. churchyards
  10. Churdar
  11. Churdars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: churchyard (page history and authors); churchyard (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); churchyard (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-churchyard.wav.

Cite this entry: “churchyard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/churchyard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.